Unit 8: Recreational Mathematics.

"Equations are just the boring part of mathematics. I attempt to see things in terms of geometry." Stephen Hawking

WARM-UP

1. What is recreational mathematics?

Label the pictures below with the names: Sudoku, Rubik’s cube, tangrams, origami, Towers of Hanoi. Have you ever tried any of these? Which of these do you think is the most difficult to do?

1 4

2 5

3

2. Do you agree with the English puzzlist and mathematician Henry Dudeney who wrote: “A good puzzle, like virtue, is its own reward.”?

3. What do you think about numerology? Do you agree with Sir Thomas Browne who “…admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of numbers”? Do you believe that numbers have mystical significance?

4. What magic figures do you know? Why are they called magic?

5. Work in small groups. In three minutes, write down a list of things which are usually round and/or square.

6. Look at the two paintings. What do they have in common? Do you like them?

Robert Delaunay Joie de vivre (The Joy of Life), 1930 Georges Pompidou Center, Paris	Pablo Picasso Three musicians, 1921 New York Museum of Modern Art

READING

7. What do you think the word “quadramagicology” mean? What information do you expect to read?

8. Look at the picture of a turtle and tell what is special about it. How might it be connected with the text? Share your ideas with other students.

9. Read the article below to find out if your guesses were right.

10. Some sentences have been removed from the text by mistake. Put each sentence into appropriate place in the text (1-5).

1. The corners of any 4-by-4 subsquare also sum to 34, as do the four corners of any 3-by-3 subsquare, and likewise those of any 2-by-2 subsquare.

2. The magic constant is the sum of each row's values.

3. In one evening in his 40s he composed a 16x16 square which, abandoning modesty, he called "the most magically magical of any magic square ever made by any magician".

4. It was also recorded in Book of Changes that the 3,000-year-old Chinese literature of philosophy was inspired by the magic square.

5. It is the only magic square that uses each number from 1 to 9 exactly once.

11. What do you remember after reading the text? Mark the following statements as true (T) or false (F). Then check your answers in the text.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7

1. A 3-by-3 magic square is order-5.

2. Loh shu was interpreted by the Chinese as a supernatural sign of order in the universe.

3. An order-4 magic square has 25 cells.

4. Benjamin Franklin delighted in creating magic squares as a kind of mental exercise.

5. Some cultures believed that magic squares possess mystical powers and wore them as talismans.

6. In a conventional magic square, the sum of the entries of any row, any column, or any broken diagonal is the same.

7. An antimagic square is a square in which all the rows, columns and diagonals equal different values. the Passion facade of the

Sagrada Familia cathedral